Hearing aid apparatus are useful for people with impaired hearing. A typical hearing aid comprises an ear piece mounted with a microphone for collecting ambient sound and an amplifier for amplifying the collected sound. However, the sound quality of conventional hearing aid apparatus is not satisfactory.
Various sound quality enhancing techniques have been proposed to enhance sound quality of hearing aid apparatus.
For example, WO 97/40645 discloses a directional acoustic receiving system in the form of a necklace and including an array of microphones mounted on a housing supported on the chest of a user. Such a system requires a division of audio frequency by the microphones and the quality of sound is still unsatisfactory.
WO 2007/052185 discloses a hearing aid system in which a plurality of sound detectors is mounted on the side and front portion of an eye-glass frame. Such a system is so heavy, bulky and complicated that the product is not available to the public.
HK1101028A by the same inventor discloses a hearing aid apparatus comprising a pair of ear mounted parts. Each ear mount part comprises a housing having a curved portion for attaching to the rear curved part of a user's ear. A microphone is mounted at the bottom end of the housing and the sound collected by the pair of microphones is processed by an external signal processor using beamforming techniques. However, the apparatus is relatively bulky, the sound quality is not satisfactory and the pair of parts must be worn at the same time in order to work as designed.
Therefore, it would be advantageous if improved hearing aid apparatus can be provided.